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It's not as surprising as that. In fact, I would not call it much of a surprise at all.
Probably the same can be said for MySpace and any other "social" site - they appeal to some mix of the insecure (such as teenagers) and the narcissistic (a particular kind of sociopath, often an adult). I had a FaceBook account for a short while, then saw what other people were doing there (people I know), and decided not to be a part of the vacuous trumpeting that substitutes for interaction. My FaceBook account was zom

Sky may be blue. Our recent study indicates that many people perceive a colour when looking at an unobstructed sky. In English-speaking countries, the word most often used to describe that colour is "blue".

In fact, many people who wish to simply define "blue", use the sky as a reference.

I hate to break it to you and to Slashdot in general, but not every response to the underlying sentiment behind the sarcasm is a failure to understand that it was, in fact, sarcasm. The uptake of this idea is low because it might give the peanut gallery a little less to chuckle about.

About Facebook, I've been saying this for a long time now on various other Slashdot stories that mention it. I usually use the term "exhibitionist" to describe what is clearly not a desire that would occur to mentally heal

At their best, they can produce a momentary sense of gratification shortly followed by a need for more. There's no lasting joy, meaning, or well-being to be found in them.

Brother, that's life. Period. Get your ephemeral joy in because there is no other kind of happiness to be had.

A lot of people feel the way that you do. I used to, in fact.

After you've suffered enough of that, which unfortunately may take years, what you realize is that the joy you derive from doing the right thing, from loving and looking after your fellow human being, from all of those unsolicited and unexpected acts of kindness and understanding, those were the only things that really mattered. Those are the things that the world can't take away from you unless you permit it.

They're extrapolating too far outside the sample. The sample was 100 university students. They don't adequately represent the population that uses Facebook. Plus, we have no idea how they ranked the narcissism and self-esteem listed in TFA. If narcissism was determined by how much you tell other people about what you do, of course people using Facebook would rank highly on that scale.

Based on the number of friends I have, and the number of announcements of "hey join me at farm wars" Vs. "hai Im in ur survey you can haz cheezburger" Vs. "L@@K at me, L@@K what I did 11!111!!!" I'd say that the survey is fairly accurate. Taking that further to the couple people I *know* to have low self esteem and the one true narcissist I know, and how much time they spend on FB, yeah I think the survey is spot on.-nB

After agreeing to participate in this research study, Facebook owners were administered a brief four-part questionnaire. The first section required demographic information, including the participant's age and gender. The second section addressed Facebook activity; it required respondents to indicate the number of times they check their Facebook page per day and the time spent on Facebook per session. The remaining sections assessed two psychological constructs: self-esteem and narcissism.

The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale was used to measure participant self-esteem. This 10-item test measured self-esteem using a 4-point Likert scale, ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Example items include “On the whole, I am satisfied with myself” and “I take a positive attitude toward myself.” The original reliability of this scale is 0.72. This measure has gained acceptable internal consistency and test–retest reliability, as well as convergent and discriminant validity.

Narcissism was assessed using the Narcissism Personality Inventory (NPI)-16. The NPI-16 is a shorter, unidimensional measure of the NPI-40. While the 40-item measure revealed an =0.84, the NPI-16 has an =0.72. Despite this discrepancy, the two measures are correlated at r=0.90 (p

Considering 50% or so of our population have a degree of some kind and have graduated from college, university or both. And somewhere around ~20 million out of 33 million people use it, it's probably closer to the truth than you'd expect.

But we're willing to take a priori definitions of narcissists and people with low self-esteem?

We're way into the deep end of the soft-science pool here, and it's not a big pull-back reveal that narcissists and those with low self-esteem seek out essentially risk-free forms of socialization and fora for self-aggrandizement.

Worse still, the study was conducted on a set of just 100 students, which hardly seems like a statistically sound sample unless the biases are off the charts. Additionally, we couldn't sa

exactly - "it's obvious" snarkiness seems to be an example of attitudes from people confused about the nature of scienceEither that, or they know science and mark stuff like this as a lower priority considering limited research resources.There is some value in the details of what seems obvious, even if the basic premise holds

If they said it without a study we'd have a bunch of "[citation please]" followed by sarcastic comments that a few anecdotes are meaningless, and how they happen know a bunch of humble self-assured people who use facebook a lot too.

So yes, they needed a fucking study. Its how we separate truth from truthiness. Science at work. Just because it confirms what most people might beleive is true doesn't make it unworthy of study. Sometimes looking into things that most people believe is true has surprising results.

What they apparently didn't notice is that narcissists are always people with low self esteem (though the converse isn't necessarily true). The narcissist loves an image of themself that is improved or perfected in some way and does not correspond to their actual self. They do not hold their actual self in high esteem, which is why they create the image. Unfortunately, this situation is all too common, with sad effects for all concerned.

No doubt they do. And they are probably among millions of others who go there to keep connected with friends that they wouldn't otherwise be able to. Vain people look in mirrors a lot. Does that mean only people who are vain own mirrors? What a ridiculous study.

Baloney. I'm a narcissist, but I'm not a frequent user of Facebook. In fact, the only reason I use Facebook at all is that it prevents ISPs from automatically filtering as spam the frequent emails I used to send to each of my 2,351,672 female admirers with photographs of me engaged in my latest adventure, and the regular helpful advice I send to my 14,843,590 less fortunate male friends about how to improve their physique or... ahem... performance... to more closely resemble my own and benefit their flaggin

the reply you're looking for is: "correlation does not imply causation", and fairly obvious.

not looking good today canadian theorists.

Really? Did you actually read the paper in question before making such an accusation?

As predicted, there was a significant positive correlation between individuals who scored higher on the NPI-16, the number of times Facebook was checked per day, and the time spent on Facebook per session. This result is consistent with the findings presented in another study that examined narcissism and Facebook activity.

Given these findings, it was hypothesized that narcissists would present a similar opportunity for self-promotion on Facebook. Results partially supported this hypothesis. Significant positive correlations were found between scores on the NPI-16 and self-promotion in the following areas: Main Photo, View Photos (20), Status Updates, and Notes. However, a Pearson correlation analysis failed to show a significant correlation between narcissism and About Me self-promotion.

(Emphasis added).

Indeed, the researcher spends her entire time pointing out in her paper that she found a variety of interesting correlations, and acknowledges the limitations of her research methodology. She doesn't once draw any definitive conclusions that the research means anything.

I'd say it's looking significantly better for Canadian theorists (well, in this case, a student) than it is for armchair/. posters who

You mean these people who used to (I deactivated my facebook account long ago) annoy the arse out of me with their childrens every bowel movement and that their workout was great are narcissists? And just want attention? I sense a book on facebook addiction and overcoming it coming out soon.

...and here I was thinking they were all using Twitter for all that. Nothing makes you feel more important then tweeting to the world that you are driving to work, I mean everyone cares and takes the time about your mundane day to day tasks..... right? After all, Twitter is all about you, you, and you. For the insecure, nothing makes you feel more wanted then being able to follow celebrities... like Joy Behar.

Most of my friends that are still active facebookers tend to use it for business means. One amusing direction for facebook would be a bunch of promoters saying "Hey, come to my club, you're cool just for coming!" and narcissists thinking, "Yeah, I should definitely go, it'll make me look cooler!" and in the end, facebook will be win-win-win, where the promoters, the narcissists, and the sane minority all get their way.

Heh, one of my FB friends (old highscool classmate) does indeed kinda flog his music-producer business although he does have some non-business posts in the mix.However, it's natural to expect people to talk about something they're enthusiastic about, financial or not

in the end, facebook will be win-win-win, where the promoters, the narcissists, and the sane minority all get their way.

You forgot to mention Facebook itself, who sells ads to companies. Ads which don't link people to the company's external website, but to Facebook itself, driving up the cost of ads that it sells to companies...

I really like this part of it - I have some of the local venues on my list, so I get to see which acts are playing when with out going to a bunch of websites. That, and one club in particular likes to run a bunch of theme nights, and FB is handy for that.

Besides, how else do you propose we organize a roving house party with in excess of 100 attendees every week for the post college crowd?

100 people surveyed? Students? Sounds like there might be some sampling concerns there. How many people out of 100 are narcissists? Also, anyone know the reputability of the journal it was published in [liebertpub.com]?

Mehdizadeh went on to say "that's why so many people get paranoid if their boss sees them on Facebook. They're worried that they don't project the same image there that they project in their workplace."

Yeah or you know the reason the rest of us get nervous is the fact that you're not doing work if you're on Facebook. Unless he means 'on Facebook' outside of work and then it's probably closer to the fact that you can't always control what goes on on Facebook unless you don't allow anything on your page.

According to TFA the study sample involved college students. What about other demographic groups? For most of the more "mature" folks I know that use Facebook it's a means of keeping in touch with distant friends, or to maintain a bit of social connection in a life dominated by work and family obligations.

According to TFA the study sample involved college students. What about other demographic groups? For most of the more "mature" folks I know that use Facebook it's a means of keeping in touch with distant friends, or to maintain a bit of social connection in a life dominated by work and family obligations.

Most studies involve students because researches work at universities.

These same studies also cite a study which justifies the use of students for studies.

I would cite it, but you clearly have not done any research, so neither will I.

I found facebook as a great place to reconnect for the first time with girls that used to be pretty in high school, clinging to their pregnancy photos as though they were my own children, laughing with them.. printing them out and putting them on my fridge.. It's also a great place to have a decent, private conversation with your best friend's mom without him "getting all weird about this". A place for adults to communicate as they wish. A place for grownups.

Not only that, but the article never used the phrase "self promotion" as the Slashdot summary did. Self promotion has business purposes outside of narcissism. And, yes, I have gotten job offers from my Facebook profile (whereas with LinkedIn I get 10x as many but those are just leads).

There is a lot of negative sentiment on Slashdot regarding Facebook, but I find it to be a great way to keep in contact with friends from the past. It's cheaper and more fun than sending 125 Christmas cards as I used to.

In remember when I only heard the word "narcissist" and "narcissism" in the college classroom and in self help books. But in the last 2 years I think its usage has been climbing dramatically. Anyone with Lexus-Nexus access care to check? I think it was a lyric in a few pop songs so maybe that's the cause.....

I find it humorous that so many Slashdotters bag on Facebook users, who are apparently self-absorbed. Tell me you don't give a rat's ass how your Slashdot comments are moderated. Tell me you've never looked to see how many people are interested in reading your comments. I know there will always be those who profess to be completely disinterested in their social standing in Slashdot, but methinks the number who actually don't give a damn is smaller than the number who make that claim.

well, if/. is the main way to socialize, then certainly, you'd care about those things. My comments end up being moderated up and then almost inevitably down because my opinions are not accepted, I still post though, I guess after all these years it's a habit.

Do people care what others think about their facebook posts? Do they think "Oh damn, I should have reworded my status update about those burned noodles, the grammar nazis are totally going to get me." I didn't think so.

There's a difference between not letting the world get you down, and not giving a shit if you annoy them for no reason. That's the difference between slashdot and facebook.

Exactly. When I saw the title, the first that hit me is that these two characteristics are states of mind, not a whole person. I could be narcissistic one day, and have low self esteem another day (although, wouldn't that also be characterized as a depression?;). Most people on my FB page are just using it for games, or the occasional funny link they found. Not everybody takes it to the South Park level of commitment.

there's probably an even larger group of users who are grandchildren. Grandchildren who, when trolling for sex on facebook, should probably remember that they have friended their grandparents... (And yes, studies confirm that 100% of facebook users are grandchildren of someone.)

Further studies concluded that although 100% of facebook are grandchildren of someone, fewer than 20% were grandchildren of other facebook users, and only 87% of those had active (i.e. living) grandparents on facebook.